


Changing Faces

by NeapolitanPrincex



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeapolitanPrincex/pseuds/NeapolitanPrincex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amethyst decides to take part in her friends prank on one of her classmates, but when things start going into motion she finds herself having a change of heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Female Only

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to:  
> \- Pearl_Jam for being my inspiration! I'm still not including :^) but you rock, girl!  
> \- Chai for proofreading! It's so cool that you're always willing to give me your opinion.

“Holy shit Amethyst, come check this out!”

It was a normal Friday night for the self-titled ‘cool kids’ of their year. Immediately after school finished for the week, Amethyst, Jasper and Peridot would go out and – depending on how much money they had accrued – spend the majority of it on drinks, snacks or weed. All were cash sinks in their own right and tended to feed into one another, but Peridot was fairly on point with calculating their average spending. After that they’d stay up well after midnight consuming whatever they got however they wanted and played games, watched shitty movies or occasionally made out.

Tonight’s source of fun was an idea Peridot had pushed on them. She had set up a fake profile on a dating website she claimed was a ‘goldmine of entertainment’. Jasper provided a picture of her cousin Lapis (naturally without permission) and after selecting a random set of likes and dislikes they were browsing. They had found a few laughs in the first couple of hours, but nothing to write home about. Jasper and Amethyst had gotten a little uneasy with Peridot’s obsession to find more as the night drew on. Either she really wanted to be right, or she was actually trying to find a partner for herself. Neither were very good reasons.

Amethyst was half-asleep when she heard her name called out. She brushed the bag of whatever snack food was strewn across her shirt off her and onto the bed, letting out a dazed ‘h-wuh?’ before crawling to its end. Peridot was sitting beneath it, clutching her sides as she laughed uncontrollably, and Jasper was wiping tears from her eyes. Bouncing in Peridot’s lap was the laptop she had spent hours hunched over. Amethyst leaned forward to pick it up, curious what had warranted being called out by name. Her eye’s widened as she saw the picture.

“No way…”

She glanced over to the name and location, her mouth hanging open as a dumb smile formed on it. She could feel air forcibly escaping her mouth in a silent laugh.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

It was Pearl. She knew her from several of her mandatories, and that was more than enough to make this hilarious. She was strict, obnoxiously smart, volunteered as student rep for all her classes and as far as Amethyst knew, never smiled. She always had this disapproving scowl that kept her seated at the far end of the class. If it was hard enough to approach this girl on as little as a friendly level, how did she expect anyone would want to date her?

“Man, look at her picture! She almost looks human!” Amethyst howled, clutching her forehead in one hand and her heart in the other. Her picture was a self-portrait taken from the waist up. It could easily have been mistaken for a school photo, but despite how formally she was dressed she wasn’t wearing the uniform. It was shot up against a plain wall, but there seemed to be a lot of work put into the lighting. Her hands were clenched together in front of her stomach just out of shot, but the positioning of the camera and the background suggested it was a timed camera that had taken the photo. She had a rather embarrassing smile, one she looked like she was being forced to make at gunpoint.

“That’s not even the best part!” Jasper laughed as she clambered up onto the bed. One of her hands – naturally the messier, crumb-stained one – gripped the top of the laptop’s screen as the other pointed to a small section underneath her picture. It took a few seconds for Amethyst to see what exactly she was pointing at, but when she did her mouth opened even wider to the point that her jaw hurt.

“Holy shit, Wonder Nerd’s gay?!”

It was hard for her to believe it, but there it was. Right under Jasper’s greasy finger it stated, ‘Preference: Female Only’. This was confirmed again in her description, which Amethyst was compelled to read in a mocking voice.

“’Artistic individual looking for equal minded parties. Female only. Hobbies include reading, fencing and violin.’ Oh my god, her profile is like some old divorced lady.”

Her laughter was cut short with a shriek, bouncing the laptop back and forth in her lap before reaching out and dropping it back into Peridot’s unexpecting hands, who responded with her own cry. The page had refreshed and now underneath her basic information was a small icon with a link next to it that read ‘Pearl is (Online)!’

Peridot tilted her head back towards Amethyst, baring her gritted teeth as she prepared to hurl an insult. However, that was quickly redirected to Jasper when she noticed the nasty Cheeto-grime on her screen and now covering the webcam.

“Jasper I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t touch my things when your hands are dirty!”

Jasper responded with a shrug, leaning in to find out what had caused the freak-out. She raised an eyebrow and rolled over on the bed, picking up another bag of chips. She ate upside down for a few seconds before her idea finished formulating in her head, shoving herself further down until her head just about touched the small geek’s thigh.

“Hey, you know what we should do?!”

Peridot narrowed her eyes as she looked down to the grinning woman, who waggled her finger in a gesture to come closer. She leaned down and rested her ear close to Jasper’s lips. She held her hand next to it, whispering into her ear. Amethyst shuffled forward and hung her head over the edge of the bed, curious what the two were discussing without her. Her brow furrowed, scooting down as she tried to catch a few of the words. Before she could grasp anything from their conversation, they had stopped talking and turned their heads to her, grinning from cheek to cheek.

“Want to pull a prank on her?”

* * *

 

It took them a few minutes to sort things out. Jasper and Amethyst paced around the room, arms crossed as they tried to list off subjects they were aware she enjoyed. It wasn’t too difficult, as she was very quick to lord her tastes over others. Peridot had her glasses pushed all the way up the bridge of her nose, furiously typing in an attempt to fill their profile out and appear less… Well, fake. Their brains felt like they were steaming from overuse by the time she was done, but now they were ready. They were going to play her like a damn fiddle.

Peridot was left in control of the laptop. She had the best writing skills of the trio (though there wasn’t much contest) so the impersonation would be left to her. She clicked on the link and a small chat window opened up in the corner of the screen. After taking a deep breath to get into character, her fingers took to the keyboard once again as she introduced her character.

‘Hello! I was lucky you happened to be online when I logged in. I would have left a message earlier, but it felt too formal.’

While Peridot was already squinting at the screen, the other two were trying to snicker quietly behind her back. Amethyst was laid down on the bed, resting her jaw on her hands as she watched. Jasper was sitting next to her, one of her arms crossed over her chest as she propped the other’s hand over her mouth. It was a decent minute or two before a response popped up.

‘No need to worry! I understand how that can feel. Nice to meet a fellow strings enthusiast. :)’

Jasper was already laughing very loudly at this point. Her hand went to wipe her eyes again before resting it on her chest in mock sympathy. “Oh, what it must be like to be a 50 year old trapped in the body of a teenager…”

Amethyst showed a bit more decorum, chuckling into her hand as Peridot worked up a response.

‘Same here. Any chance you’re available this weekend? I’d like to get to know you better.’

Peridot pulled her eyes from the screen to look up to her accomplices, feeling a bead of sweat form on her brow. She exhaled loudly, leaning back against the bed and resting her arms up on it. She threw her head back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if she had gone too far. If Pearl said no now, this would have been a night she completely wasted. But when she glanced back and forth between Amethyst and Jasper’s expressions they were still laughing. She looked back down to see a new message.

‘I would love to! Do you have any preferences on where you’d like to meet up?’

She grinned and adjusted her glasses. This was going to be hilarious.


	2. I'll Take You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the pieces fall into place, Amethyst has a change of heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE! WOO! Thank you to everyone who helped me through my depression and helped me finally release this chapter. I love you all and thank you for sticking with me during that terrible hiatus.

Even with all of the windows cracked open, the car stunk. It was an old second-hand sedan straight out of the late 90’s, of which it was very questionable as to whether or not it smelled this bad when Jasper first bought it. There was a small collection of wrappers for a variety of food scattered about the floor, a small amount of which had been piled into a plastic bag in a discarded attempt to clean at some point in time. It was a piece of junk, but it managed to get them where they needed to go. And today, it had brought them to the business district. The price for on-street parking was – as always – ridiculous, but this time around it was more than worth the price of admission.

They all had their own quasi-grudges with Pearl. Peridot was constantly belittled for her messy get-up and playing second fiddle to her in maths and science due to her so-called ‘lack of effort’. Jasper and Amethyst were called out frequently on their ‘unruly behavior’, Amethyst more so if only for the fact that she shared more classes with the girl. The longer the trio had to ruminate on their grievances, the more their resent grew and the more excited they became to witness their plan come to fruition.

Peridot and Amethyst let out a collective groan as Jasper turned to them and extended her hand towards the backseat. They pulled out and set their wallets down between them, combing through for any spare change they could buy their time with. Two quarters and several dimes was all it amounted to. They pooled their change into Jasper’s hand, who looked it over and grunted before pulling out her own wallet. They had a system; Jasper paid for the car and the gas, and Amethyst and Peridot always paid for the expenses. She didn’t like having to waver from the lofty position she had appointed herself. A few more quarters joined the pile and the driver-side window was rolled to the bottom of the frame. There was an uneasy whimper from both girls as the giant woman leaned out of the car, trying to reach the meter. She waved her arm as if trying to find a handhold to pull the entire car closer to it, though her attempt seemed like it would sooner tip the car over. She stopped when a nasally screech rung throughout the vehicle.

“JUST GET OUT OF THE CAR, YOU CLOD!”

Both Jasper and Amethyst turned to the source, Jasper in particular looking astonished as Peridot clutched her own head, shaking in place. She looked like she was attempting to simultaneously claw out her scalp with her fingers and break both rows of her teeth with the force of the other. While they wouldn’t use the term delicate, they both knew that she was high strung and rather easily frightened. Jasper gave her a gentle nod as she pulled her head back in and tried to open the door, which wouldn’t give way until she rammed her shoulder into it. She tumbled out onto the sidewalk and casually brushed herself off, pacing over to the other side of the meter to start filling the slots with their change.

“Okay, we’ve got about twenty-AGH!”

Several hands grabbed onto her tank top and pulled her back in. Both of her friends eyes were wide open, glancing back and forth between her and across the road. ‘Shit’ and ‘Move’ were mumbled between the three as they tried to hide in the car; Amethyst and Peridot managed to get away with just sinking into their seats, but Jasper had to rest her rear off the end of hers to get low enough to hide behind the dashboard. She tried to close the door, but after a few useless tugs she abandoned it and left it loosely clinging to the frame, letting the indoor lights usurp her battery. They then fell into silence and observed. Pearl was already there, waiting on a bench just across the street.

It had been hard for the two smaller girls to tell it was her, at first. Everything about her was so drastically different. She wore an aquamarine sundress, which from its shoulder straps started plain, but by the end grew darker, lit with a vibrant yellow star print. Her short peach hair was tidied up with a thin headband that matched the light blue of the dress, and her toes curled eagerly into beige summer sandals as she looked up and down the street, waiting for the date that would never come. They had only ever seen her in her uniform, even the few times they had run across her after school. It felt alien to see her in something else, to see her… Happy. It wasn’t what any of them had come here to see.

Silence filled the car. Jasper and Peridot’s mouths hung open, the smaller of the two trying to force out a laugh to justify the experience. They had already bought the time, so she felt obliged to try and enjoy the discomforting display. In comparison, Jasper was ready to cash in her chips, hand trying to find her keys to turn the ignition and waste whatever change they had spent. Amethyst was the only one who could keep her eyes on this strange, beautiful girl that filled the place of someone she was supposed to despise.

She watched her head turn, smiling down the road and at whoever passed her. It was close to 10 minutes since when they had arranged the date to start, but Pearl’s elated expression wasn’t fading. Each time it gave a sign of faltering or her lips started to lose their cheerful curl, she would swing her head to the other end of the street with a renewed hope for her date’s appearance as her fingers tapped away at the end of the bench she occupied. Amethyst’s hand crawled up to her chest, clutching it as if trying to prevent her heart from bleeding out as it was ripped in two. This girl was the embodiment of innocence, and she was responsible for abusing that. She had given her a dream solely for the purpose of shattering it. Was she really that bad a person?

By the time the car roared into life, one of the passenger doors slammed shut. Jasper paused, and both her and Peridot’s eyes traced their third wheel as she crossed the road, ignoring all the oncoming traffic that slammed to a halt in front of her and blared their horns in annoyance. Amethyst drove her hands into the pockets of her jeans, cursing to herself as she closed the distance between herself and their victim. She felt the air being driven out of her as Pearl met her angry gaze. For a moment her eyes seemed to sparkle and her smile grew even wider, but it was soon replaced with the familiar heartless, criticizing glare that told Amethyst this was indeed the same girl.

“Oh… Amethyst.”

Amethyst had to break her eyes away before she could speak. Despite losing the unimaginably adoring look, there was something that made her anger fade and her cheeks flush in Pearl’s presence. Her hand immediately dove over her shoulder and went to the back of her neck, rubbing it as she tried to find her words. She had spent years putting up with her critiques, but this was the first time she felt like she wanted to meet them. Pearl was expecting a tall, thin, delicate and beautiful girl with fair skin and electric blue hair, and Amethyst was none of those. She was short and stocky, her skin was dark and covered in bruises and cuts, and her hair was dark brown (with the exception of her caramel highlights), long and unruly. She had never felt so inadequate in her life.

“Uh, hey Pearl.” she started, her rubbing turning to scratching as she coated her nape with nail marks. She could feel the tall, scrawny girl’s eyes looking her up and down, trying to search the eyes she had darting across the concrete for a reason behind her appearance. She had to think of something to say before she worked it out… Why did she come over here without knowing what to say?!

“So, um, Lazuli-” Amethyst froze when she saw Pearl’s eyes widen. It was easy to see she was merely shocked from hearing the name, though it wouldn’t take too much longer for her to connect the dots unless she intervened.

“She, uh, she couldn’t be here,” she interjected, hoping she wasn’t sweating as hard as she thought she was, “she got, um… Held up. Her mom ended up in hospital, she had to go see her instead.” Her eyes stung when she blinked, feeling Pearl’s gaze dig into her and claw her skin off as she tried to reveal the truth she was so poorly hiding. “We’re friends and, uh, I was in the neighborhood. She said something like ‘only sending a text seemed', uh... 'insensitive’.”

The harsh digging sensation in Amethyst’s body gave way to a cold emptiness, watching Pearl’s expression morph as she tried to gauge her own reaction. If Pearl knew she was hiding something, she seemed to have given up on finding out what it was. “Oh.” she replied, brows knitting as she played the words back in her mind, making sure she had heard everything correctly. “Oh…” she repeated in a more despondent tone, shrinking away into her seat as her gaze lowered to the sidewalk.

Amethyst’s heart was beating out of control as she saw Pearl’s break into tiny pieces. It was like she had drunk 10 consecutive Monster’s. If she managed to live through this, the organ equivalent of social services should come and take her heart away, maybe give it to someone else who wouldn’t abuse it as terribly as she did. She had dealt with crushes and relationships before, but all it had ever required was a quick flirt or a ‘please forgive me’ fingerbang and everything would turn out fine. Neither of those seemed applicable to this situation. She had shattered this delicate vase of a girl thanks to her carelessness. It was a fate she didn’t deserve, and the most Amethyst could do in this situation was try to piece her back together.

“I’ll take you.” squeaked out of Amethyst’s throat before she even had a chance to realize what she was saying. Their eyes widened simultaneously, and the smaller girl hoped Pearl couldn’t hear the shrill call for help she could feel trying to force its way past her lips. Pearl brought her head back up from the concrete and met Amethyst’s frightened gaze, blinking as she let out a confused ‘h-wha?’ and left her jaw hanging open.

“O-On that date, I mean.” she stammered out, shuffling into what she hoped was a less casual posture that would make her seem more dignified. Though she still had one hand stuffed in the pocket of her worn, ripped jeans and the other clawing at her neck, she at least stood up a little more straight. “You seem to have put a lot of work into,” she waved an imaginary third hand up and down to gesture to Pearl’s body, the rest of her body shrivelling away as she watched her feet kick the ground on an almost obsessive level, “...This. Feel bad if you wasted it, y’know?”

Pearl’s expression was pure bewilderment, unable to believe yet awed by the words coming out of Amethyst’s mouth. After the initial shock, her eyes narrowed as her body seemed to retreat, legs tucking themselves underneath the bench and hand raising to her lips, growing more and more pensive over time. There was a lump in Amethyst’s throat that she couldn’t seem to gulp down, hanging on for her response, another feeling she was fully aware she hadn’t experienced before today.

“I-”

Before Pearl could even get a word out of her mouth, both girls jumped nearly a foot in the air as an obnoxiously loud ringtone. Amethyst’s eyes went wide as both of her hands started digging into her other pocket, rushing to get it out and answer before it broke into some rather unsavory lyrics. She could hear a nasally screech before it even reached her ear, stifling an annoyed groan as she pressed it in with a casual, “Yo.”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING YOU CLOD?!” roared through the speakers again. Amethyst turned her head away to wince, eliciting a confused pursing of Pearl’s lips. “Who is it?” she inquired, a hint of the original tone that drew Amethyst out of the car causing the girl to think before responding.

“It-It’s Lapis.” she answered, her voice breaking as her messy attempt to bold-facedly lie squeaked out of her lips. Before Peridot could interject with a denial or another ear-piercing screech, she held the end of the phone closer to her lips. “Yeah, I asked her out.” she answered matter-of-factly, resulting in another confused shriek on the other end of the line. Amethyst looked up to the car across the road, seeing a mountain of blonde hair clawing at the inside of the window like she was trapped in a gas chamber, making a painful level of eye contact all the while.

“Yeah … Mhm … Yeah she seems alright … I’ll tell you about it when you get back from the hospital … Okay … Okay bye.” Her answers completely eluded from the questions Peridot outright yelled at her, forming her own narrative to hurriedly end the call while also aiding in her own cause. Before another word could get out, she hung up and dialed the volume on her phone down until it hit the ‘vibrate’ option. It was only a quick fix to a rather messy situation, but she was much more comfortable with having it buzz against her thigh then further deterring Pearl with have aggressive and curse-filled wrapping blazing out of her pocket.

She sighed to herself as she slipped the sleek black rectangle into her pocket, both hands now comfortably resting in them with thumbs left poking out. Her feet twisted and her eyes trailed along the ground as she turned back, only making occasional glances up to the rather confused yet still calming face of her date-to-be. “So, uh… Do I ask again or something…?” she joked in an attempt to make up for her bashfulness, shoulders raising with an obligatory ‘heh’.

“I’ll go.”

Those two words made Amethyst freeze up. Despite it being her intention, she hadn’t necessarily planned for Pearl to go along with it. It was just something she could ask to soften the blow, but… But this was good, right? It was an even better outcome than what she had predicted, and yet it made her stomach fill with butterflies and made her brain buzz, causing a confused, “Huh?”

“On a date, I mean. You’re right, I put a lot of work into this, so… Yes. Let’s go on a date.” All these words tumbled out of Pearl’s mouth as she took her own turn to writhe in discomfort, feet twisting against the ground, head turning about every which way and fingertips rubbing and tapping together. The display turned Amethyst’s cheeks and ears an unhealthy level of red and caused another gulp of saliva.

Both hands had left their pockets and were now squeezing at her sides, unsure where to go or what to do. What was natural in this situation? The only reference she had for a ‘classy’ date was boring and terrible romance movies that came on TV when she was too lazy or wasted to bother changing the channel. Her right hand slid up to her waist before slowly disappearing behind her back, tipping over slightly as the left extended in offer. “Shall we…?” she offered, only to notice that Pearl had already begun to get up. It took a while for Pearl to find her feet, toes gripping her sandals and arms spreading out not too far from her sides, palms flat in a pose that matched the precision of a ballerina. She only caught a glimpse of the hand offered to her before it was retracted, Amethyst stuffing both hands back into their respective pockets and glancing from side to side.

“So… Where did you want to go?”

Pearl let out an ‘oh’ and responded with her own look up and down the street, hand raising to rest in front of her mouth as she tried to take in the surroundings that seemed to slip away during their brief yet awkward encounter. There was an ‘ah!’ after she performed a 180° turn, the hand pulling away to gesture to the cafe she had been standing in front of. “The cafe! Yes!”

The little performance left Amethyst dumbfounded, fighting back a laugh as she nodded along with her gesture. “Okay. Coffee. Cool.” she acknowledged, feeling her words start to come more naturally. Unfortunately there was a moment where Pearl turned back and their eyes met that made Amethyst’s sudden casualness slip away once again, eyes keeping on the ground in front of them as she took a step forward, motioning for Pearl to take the next. They soon found themselves walking alongside each other, Amethyst’s head hung slightly and hands hiding in her pockets as she felt her phone vibrating against her thigh and Pearl’s head surprisingly high, hands joining in front of her as they took a turn off of the sidewalk up to the cafe. While Pearl rubbed her sandals against the doormat with a hum, Amethyst turned to see Jasper’s car starting to pull out of its spot. Jasper’s face was obscured, though between passing cars she could see Peridot had moved to the front seat, still glued to the window and staring daggers at her in a way that said, “We’ll be talking about this later.”. Amethyst responded with a casual poking of her tongue, watching the car pull out onto the road and disappear down the street before turning back and following Pearl inside.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always open to criticism and am definitely not above editing my works after they're published! Please, if you have any thoughts on things I could include, change or take out, leave a message saying so! And thank you to everyone that took the time to read my fic!


End file.
